Saturday, March 14, 2015

2 tea bloggers meet

The tea blogging world is rather small when you consider how many tea drinkers (or even shops) there are around in the Western world. So, it was with real pleasure that I met William from the Bannablog. We had exchanged teas in the past and now he's in Taiwan for half a year for his studies. And what he studies is very interesting, since it's agriculture and his objective is to become a tea farmer.

So, our meeting became a two-way exchange of experiences and teas. We started with this puerh maocha from northern Thailand. It's a tea that William has processed using leaves from an abandoned plantation! Exciting stuff!

We brewed it in parallel with very different techniques. I used much fewer leaves than William and a longer brewing time. His brew had more flavors and energy. My goal was to test these leaves by subjecting them to a competition mode brew. The result was something powerful, with lots of aftertaste and fresh scents. It was a little rough and smoky, because it's a summer harvest and the tools he had at his disposal were very basic, but it's clean, natural and has lots of potential.

Thai puerh

After that, we compared 2 Alishan Oolongs William bought by himself in Taipei to my Da Yu Ling and my Alishan TieGuanYin. (I wish I had had my own Alishan Oolong with me at that time). But I thought that it would be easier and faster to let him know about the taste of a fantastic High Mountain Oolong with the Da Yu Ling. The difference was indeed quite dramatic. The Da Yu Ling's brew is much greener and lighter than the Alishan see below):

DYL vs Alishan

And the taste is sweet, fresh, flowery with a refined aftertaste. (Here again, we used a simple long brewing with few leaves method). That's where great teas are excellent tools to learn about what quality tastes like! And I was glad I could share these teas and this experience with this fellow tea blogger!